TACOMA (AP) — Despite pleas from her husband, her daughter and her former pastor, a Gig Harbor woman was sentenced Friday to 18 years in prison for hiring a hit man to kill her son-in-law.
Jacqueline Ray’s family pleaded with Pierce County Judge Stanley Rumbaugh for mercy at Friday’s hearing, saying that for decades, the respiratory therapist volunteered her time with both the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts, fed the homeless and served on the local search-and-rescue team.
But Rumbaugh was not in a merciful mood and gave Ray a sentence 13 years higher than her lawyers asked.
The judge sentenced Ray, who pleaded guilty last month to second-degree murder, to 18 years, four months in prison. Prosecutors contended Ray paid Luis Barker $12,000 to kill Leon Baucham Jr. in July 2012. She then lured Baucham to her house, where Barker was waiting. He shot Baucham to death and dumped his body in a remote area near her house.
Rumbaugh acknowledged Ray’s past contributions, but he said her actions were not deserving of leniency.
“Where was mercy when Leon Baucham lay dying on Jackie Ray’s doorstep?” Rumbaugh said. “There was no mercy for Leon Baucham.”
After her arrest, Ray told detectives she was trying to protect her daughter from Baucham, who she said was physically abusive.
Bryan Hershman, Ray’s attorney, reiterated those claims Friday, saying his client feared Baucham might kill her daughter. “This is not some irrational person,” Hershman said. “It is a mother worried about the salvation of her daughter.”
Baucham’s wife, Umeko Baucham, testified that she’d loved her husband very much but that he was abusive.
Her mother made “a horrible choice,” Umeko Baucham said, but she is not an evil person.
“She was trying to protect me,” she said. “I love her very much.”
At a hearing in January, Baucham’s family said they saw no patterns of abuse, only an isolated incident when he hit his wife.
